Nobody asked but … On this year’s Independence Day ask yourself, “of what are you independent?” Are you independent of: a state, oppressive taxes, arbitrary and capricious rulers, the threat of official violence, war, the threat of incarceration, … And so it goes. — Kilgore Forelle
Category: Nobody Asked, But
Collapse
My closet collapsed in the middle of the night. A calamitous noise brought me upright, my eyes wider than humanly possible. I first blamed the cats. But when I turned on a light, I saw that a lion’s part of my earthly possessions lay on the closet floor in disarray.
Trail of Tears
Andrew Jackson, no doubt, had lots of statist policy justifications for implementing the Trail of Tears and similar enslavements of fellow human beings. He may have even quoted Biblical alibis. Abraham Lincoln may have had lots of bureaucratic babel to spend on excuses for his bringing a country to civil war.
Confession
Hate is not in my normal vocabulary, but I must admit to four Trump Towers of Despise in my life. Trump, Giuliani, reality television, and corporate news mongering.
Impatience
I am extremely impatient for humankind to start using their brains, and consequently the gift of logic, to end behavior such as war, greed, and territoriality. But now I am reading a book that is making me take a much longer view. The book is titled This Will Make You Smarter, edited by John Brockman.
The Race Away From Big
Ray Kurzweil has recently made a significant change in his view of the future regarding the relative association between biological man and artificial intelligence. Although his views should not be capsulized — he is a very broad thinker — it is worthy of note that he has expanded beyond thinking only of a singularity in which machines overtake, and make obsolete, human consciousness.
Human Nature in Science
Human experience is not divided only into two epochs, the pre-Copernican and the Copernican. The change between those two epochs, while extremely critical, did not mark the end of human advancement in self-knowledge.
Freedom for the Taking
It is so rare as to be inconceivable that a person’s present condition cannot be traced back to a choice. Nor do I know of any cases of someone accepting total enslavement voluntarily.
Obsessing
Theodore Sturgeon once opined that “ninety percent of everything is crap” (aka Sturgeon’s Law). I’m not here to argue the number itself, but it stands to reason that the figure is heavily weighted toward the unworthy.
Not Yet the Bottom
That we have sunk to a new low is certain, but the last time I checked, we still had a reality show emcee impostering in the Oval Office. Even if he were gone, we would still have the position of POTUS, which in the long run is no different than the positions occupied by Stalin, Kim, Duterte, et al.